It’s trendy these days to incorporate non-Christian forms of worship into Christian practices, but Scripture is replete with warnings from the Lord about why this fad should be avoided.
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March 25
Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord
Virgin, in your love befriend me,
At the Judgment Day defend me.
Help me by your constant prayer.
For Reflection:
It is Mary’s desire as Spiritual Mother that all of her children attain eternal salvation. She never ceases praying for us. As the eminent theologian, Reverend Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. tells us, “…[Mary] knows all the graces that we need because she is our Mother and has received from God a universal mission to help us all on the way of salvation. Her prayer is fervent and extends to the last sinner without losing any of its intensity. “[Mary] is sovereignly good and prays for all men, yet she prays especially for those who offer no resistance to her good inspirations and faithfully recommend themselves to her, looking upon them with particular tenderness, interceding for them more pressingly, more absolutely, until she finally obtains what she asks and bring them safe home to the harbor of salvation.”
According to this quote, how then do we reap the full benefit of Mary’s intercession? What is your interior response?
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This Thursday, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord, a day very near and dear to the heart of Women of Grace.
You know the scene well. In the sixth month of her cousin Elizabeth's miraculous pregnancy, the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and said, “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!” He told her that she would conceive in her womb and bear a son, the Son of the Most High, and His name would be Jesus.
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March 24
Fairest maid of all creation,
Queen of hope and consolation,
Let me feel your grief sublime.
For Reflection:
Though we pray these words with faith and love, it is not possible for us to feel the full measure of Mary’s grief simply because she is the “fairest maid of all creation.” Conceived without sin and never having sinned, she experienced the agony of Christ as deeply as He – especially His love for the souls for whom He was dying. Reverend Garrigou- Lagrange says, “Mary’s heart, like Christ’s whole bruised and crushed being, was transformed with anguish by the sins of mankind, being altered more than the bodies and hearts of the sick, the dying, the martyred.”
You are one of those souls for Whom Jesus and Mary suffered a grief sublime. In light of this, pray again the last line above. May our grief be the grief of true repentance. Journal your thoughts.
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ST asks:
"I heard somewhere that it is possible for demons to enter into our house pets in order to harass us. Is this true?"
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March 23
At the cross, your sorrow sharing,
All your grief and torment bearing,
Let me stand and mourn with you.
For Reflection:
This stanza from Stabat Mater draws our attention to the fact that Mary stood under the Cross. What does it mean to stand? Reverend Weaver offers one characteristic of Mary’s stance: bravery. He says, “United with her heroic Son, Mary gives a shining example of the fortitude which must be practiced in the battle of life.” And of what is this fortitude the fruit? Prayer, says Father Weaver: “…prayer which comes from a heart that is in harmony with the Heart of God has tremendous power.” To what extent is your prayer life yielding the fortitude you need to stand with Mary? In what one way can you improve it today?
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March 22
Mother, may this prayer be granted:
That Christ's love may be implanted
In the depths of my poor soul.
For Reflection:
To love as Jesus loves. Mary lived this level of spiritual perfection. Dare we hope for it? Dare we wait for it? Henri Nouwen says that waiting is hope and tells us that “Hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled, but fulfilled according to the promises and not just according to our wishes.”
In the Novena to Our Lady of Hope, we read these verses from Sirach. Church fathers tell us they refer to Mary: I am the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope. In me is all grace of the way and of the truth; in me is all hope of life and of virtue. Come to me all that desire me and be filled with my fruits (Sirach 24:24-26).
Mary makes us a promise. Come to her and she will fill us with her own beatitude. “O Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Grace, Hope of the world. Hear us, your children, who cry to you.”
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March 21
Virgin, ever interceding,
Hear me in my fervent pleading:
Fire me with your love of Christ.
For Reflection:
Perhaps that which hinders us most from attaining “open-ended waiting” is our limited capacity to love. Today’s GraceLine contains the solution to this – we need Mary’s love of Christ since our own love is so weakened by concupiscence and sinfulness. St. Louis de Montfort tells us that if we consecrate ourselves to Jesus through Mary, our Mother gives us the operations of her soul. That means, we can receive her own love of Christ as our own. Is God asking you to make this consecration? Renew it? Live it more fully? How can you begin to do so today?
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March 20
Mary, fount of love's devotion,
Let me share with true emotion
All the sorrow you endured.
For Reflection:
Rev. Bertrand Weaver, C.P. writes in his book, His Cross in Your Life, that God willed to have Mary at Calvary as an “associate teacher of wisdom.” He says that, “By accepting grief ‘great as the sea,’ she united with her Divine Son in giving mankind an example of bowing before the Will of God when it could not have been more difficult.” Nouwen may have put it this way: Mary’s life was a study of open-ended waiting, a characteristic of which is “giving up control over our future and letting God define our life.”
If you truly pray the above stanza of Stabat Mater you are asking for the same grace. You are asking to live open-ended waiting. To what extent are you really willing to pray for this? What would encourage you? What would hinder you? Give all to Mary, Fount of Love’s Devotion.
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by Theresa Cavicchio
Along with many other realities, the unprecedented events of the past year have brought to light highs and lows of the human condition – joys and sorrows – that we never could have foreseen. Unexpected joys, small and great, at times have been countered with sorrows ranging to the nearly unbearable. Each of us surely could recount personal experiences falling into both categories.
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